Road Trip Wednesday, aka What Are Goblins Doing Here?

This week I’m taking part in Road Trip Wednesday, a weekly YA blog carnival:

This Week’s Topic: In honor of this month containing Halloween (the best holiday ever), what’s the scariest story you heard as a child?

I’m a total scaredy cat and generally avoid anything horror-related. (Confession: even the awesome Halloween movie Hocus Pocus freaked me out a little.) So at first I thought, I don’t remember hearing any scary stories.

Then I remembered.

Little Orphant Annie.”

My mom read my brother and I this poem by James Whitcomb Riley and, as a child raised on Annie the musical, I was so excited to hear a poem about my favorite redheaded orphan. Spoiler alert: it is not a poem about a spunky redheaded orphan and her musical friends.

Instead, it’s a poem about an orphan girl who tells tales about goblins who snatch kids who misbehave. For example:

“An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,
An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin;
An’ wunst, when they was “company,” an’ ole folks wuz there,
She mocked ’em an’ shocked ’em, an’ said she didn’t care!
An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!”

Guys, at no part of this does anyone sing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow!”

Even as a kid who didn’t misbehave a lot, I was still so freaked out. Goblings who can steal you through the ceiling?! What kind of creepy Japanese horror movie is this from?! I spent the night huddled under the covers, listening to the trees outside my window and telling myself that it had to be goblins.

Needless to say, my mom never read to us this again.

Feel free to share your own childhood scary story trauma here or as part of Road Trip Wednesday!

5 thoughts on “Road Trip Wednesday, aka What Are Goblins Doing Here?

  1. hannahkarena says:

    Hocus Pocus terrified me as a kid! It was that opening scene where they actually suck the soul out of the child and she’s left a lifeless shell. I watched it when I was about eight or nine and had nightmares I’d wake up screaming from for weeks. My parents were furious I had been allowed to watch it at a friend’s sleepover. But I rewatched it once in college–and I braced myself the whole time, ready to be scared out of my skin, and I even prepared my friends, saying I’d probably have to leave the room and find something else to do halfway through the movie, but when the credits finally rolled, I was like “that’s it?” But we never got to any scary parts! The witches are actually pretty funny now.

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